That Time I Pooped In My Pants

Any week you lose your job is a bad week, but one way to know you are having an especially difficult week is to also poop in your pants. I didn't lose my job because I lost control of my bowels, if that's what you're thinking.

It happened this past February (2009), at the downtown Seattle Public Library. Just days after a contractual snafu resulted in my travel nurse job ending 4 months ahead of schedule, and with, uh, no freaking warning, I found myself unemployed. I was using the free public library space to apply for new jobs online, like a responsible citizen should. I was past the initial whirl of sudden unemployment, where I found myself waking up at noon and stepping out on the houseboat dock in my pajamas to kayak all day. Okay, actually that phase lasted a month.

Here I am, contemplating career moves.

Now I was ready for to-do lists and resume sending. I was just minding my own motivated business at the library. As a responsible citizen, I had been up early, getting coffee, reading the paper, and chauffering my employed friend Rachel to work. During this time I had had a healthy bowel movement. If that was too much information for you, please stop reading now. It's going to get a lot worse.

When I was done job searching for the day, I stood up and packed my belongings to leave so I could get to my car before the meter expired (again, the responsibile citizenship!). 'Hmm,' I thought, 'it seems like I need to go to the bathroom again. Bonus poop!' This was nothing urgent, just a healthy message my body was sending me.

Scene of the crime.

The Seattle Public Library is very modern. Rachel desribes it as being "like Amsterdam on drugs," but she has only been there once. Both the library and Amsterdam. I thought, 'Take the stairs, don't wait for the elevator,' but nothing too alarming. Nothing like when you really have to poop in the grocery store or someplace, and you have to bend over and take a knee so that your heel presses against your butt. You pretend you are looking at items on the lowest shelf and deep breathe. Pep talk to yourself 'We can make it, dont do this to me here' as you flare your nostrils in a deep exhalation. I don't know the exact physiologic reason this maneuver is so effective, and as a nurse I probably should, but it calms everything down (something about the valsalva maneuver, or the vagus nerve, perhaps). I was not at that point yet, so what happened next was completely surprising!

I walked across the library and into the stairwell to go down to the basement, where the restrooms are located. Half a flight down I realized this particular stairwell did not go into the basement. The design of this library, like so many of it's users, is on crack. So I went back up. Again, nothing alarming or urgent yet. Just a little bit more hurry because of the delay. Note to self: it is wise to avoid stair climbing activity when in a quest for a bathroom.

I'm walking, I'm walking.

Okay I'm walking a little quickly now.

I'm retracing my steps through the stacks to the elevator...

When.It.Happens.

I thought, and only now does the cliche ring true, I thought I was going to just release a little toot.

Just a little toot.

And then I thought, with alarm,

That toot is hot.

And then I thought,

Oh my god--- that feels hot-- and wet? Oh no ugh oh my oh did i...?

My mind was struggling to keep up with the rapid sensations indicating that my body was under attack from itself. I put my hand on my bottom, and, sure enough, the seat of my jeans was hot and wet. I was horrified. Maybe, maybe that's blood! For a second I clung to the idea that I must be having a vaginal hemorrhage of a pregnancy I was unaware of. But, sadly, this was not the case. What I thought was just going to be a little toot on my way to the bathroom to take a normal poop instead turned into a liquid poison diarrhea experience in my jeans.

It's sudden, shocking, and alarming, but your first thoughts have to be of survival.

Is there going to be more?

Get to a bathroom.

And get naked.

Quickly now.

The true miracle is that I was carrying my long puffy North Face coat, which also happened to be brown. Ha!

If I had not had that coat with me, Rachel, who works several blocks away at an upscale clothing store, would have received a frantic phone call requesting immediate delivery of a pair of designer pants from her designer store to the last stall on the left in the library basement bathroom, as soon as possible. There is no telling what she would have made me do, tell, sing, or promise in exchange. I can see her, dangling the pants over the stall door, and then pulling them back when I frantically reach for them. I would be at her complete disposal. She probably would have made me give her several dozen compliments and hand her sheets of toilet paper to dab her eyes because she was ruining her mascara cry-laughing so hard. I would expect, and deserve, nothing less.

Thankfully, I had the long puffy coat. I put it on.

Then I proceeded cautiously to the elevator bay, where I had to wait with a group of about 7 people who were grumbling about how slow the elevators were. The illuminated circular button mocked us, and we each took our turn to stab it. As we waited, clumped impatietly,

it quickly became obvious that something was wrong with one of us. To be specific: it smelled like one of us had shit their pants. I was doing my best to look nonchalant, nonplussed and most importantly: non responsible. The look I tried to put on my face was one of peace and serenity. Me? I'm so calm and lost in my own library thoughts I don't even smell the diarrhea, let alone have it in my pants at this very moment.

Then the elevator arrived and we crowded in. At the last second a late comer hustled towards us, and a kindly someone stuck their arm between the closing doors. They reopened. We all squeezed a litte tighter to accomodate this young mother and her stroller. Our slow and stuffy descent to the basement began. I'm kidding myself to think my fellow passengers didn't instantly peg me as the guilty party, as I was avoiding eye contact with the focus of a ninja and the only one of us not sniffing the air distastefully.

The toddler in the stroller was nestled immediately next to me, and not once did he avert his gaze from my face. He appeared to be smirking. His mother giggled awkwardly and tried to call the babies name to get its attention. The child, seated at a low stroller height near my crotch, was possibly containing a load in his pants as well. I removed all doubt to my guilt when I shot out of the elevator the instant the door opened, headed in the direction of the bathrooms.

I don't know how many of you have been to the basement reading room of the Seattle Public Library downtown, but some smart-aleck designed a floor with all these wooden raised letters on the floorboards, very bohemian literary decorative library chic.

Oh Maux God. It's amazing. You really can find anything on the internet. Here is the floor.

It's ironic because when you walk across it, in a library where you are supposed to be quiet, it makes a freaking racket. Especially if you are wearing cowboy boots and on a beeline for the bathroom, waddling awkwardly with a hot mess in your pants. The sound was like BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! clipping across the floor. The noise my boots made on that floor careening through the quiet reading room cannot be over emphasized. I was making a scene.

When I scooted past, people looked up, and they saw me, wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a long brown coat frantically cross the room at a fast pace. I hoped to myself that they were thinking I was hustling over to the foreign language newspaper section and not just distastefully displaying my human nature in a frantic quest for digestive shelter.

Body systems: fail!

Five minutes later, this is what those same people saw: me again, clipping BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG furiously past them towards the exit, only this time I was wearing cowboy boots and my jacket. NO PANTS. I know one of them had to have thought,

"Wait a minute, didn't that girl just walk past, but wearing pants?"

Or

"What happened to that girls pants?"

I was completely naked from the waist down underneath my coat. The thought that there were probably other people (crazy, homeless) spending their day in the library, naked under their coats as well, was of no consolation to me. I had to get out of there, and fast. I always try to breeze over what happened during those 5 minutes in the bathroom, just to be polite (as if there's anything polite or ladylike about telling people you shit in your pants, and on a blog to boot). Everytime I try to tell this story without the following details, the listeners will not stand for it. They must know exactly how I solved this problem. I know I'd demand to know the same: my undies were in the trash, my jeans were rolled up in a careful ball in my purse.

Okay, actually, I'm lying. I put the undies in the pocket of the jeans and then rolled the jeans up into a self contained ball. They were a pair of Hankie Pankies, alright! They cost 18 dollars! I was going to try and wash them! I am a gross person!

I exited the library and felt a strange draft. 'I'm naked,' I thought to myself with each person I passed, 'and they don't even know it.' Being naked in public is old hat for me, but the subversiveness of being naked under a long coat, combined with the residual adrenaline from the initial pants-shatting experience, had me positively on edge. Plus, when I'm naked in public I'm not usually sober. I'm usually skinny dipping at night or spending my days sunburning my nipples at Burning Man.

As soon as I got in the car I called Tori. Tori and I share a special devotion to hilarious stories of people shitting their pants (people like her sister and her boyfriend, for example). I honestly thought I would never in my life have the chance to gain access to this exclusive club I so often mocked.

Maux: "Tori, I am driving through downtown Seattle right now, naked from the waist down, wearing nothing but my cowboys boots, my puffer jacket, and a t-shirt."

Tori: "What happened, did you shit your pants?"

Tori really knows me. And still loves me. We both struggled to breath through laughter as I relayed all of the details to her while driving quickly home. I blamed the suspect bite of turkey bacon I had eaten that morning in my breakfast sandwich. It tasted raw, and I had tried unsuccessfully to spit most of it out of the car window as I was driving. I repeatedly exclaimed, "Can you believe this shit happened to me?" only to dissolve in hysterics again because I inadvertently used the word shit.

I know responsible citizens don't talk on the cell phone while driving, but I could not keep this to myself. This is just an element of my character: I must tell someone, or many someones, and I must tell them immediately. Oh look, good thing I've discovered blogging.

Update/ Part Two:

I got home to my happy little Seattle houseboat, put my clothes in the laundry (twice), took a shower (twice), and called my mom. My mom had to pull her car over because she was laughing so hard she thought it was unsafe to continue operating her vehicle. With my teenage brother at home, she maintains close contact with current slang. "Oh my god, you sharted!" she said through laughter.

I waited to tell this story to Rachel until I was with her later that night, drinking wine and watching TiVo on her couch. I wanted to act it out for her. But another friend of hers was there when I arrived, and I couldn't quite gauge if her and I were ready to cross the Poop Friendship Barrier. The line between Too Much Information and Just Right has always been a little blurry for me (obviously).

Rachel was laying out several platters of various appetizers, including the food equivalent of shabby chic furniture : taquitos. That is just the kind of hostess she is. You cannot top her. You cannot even try. I could contibute nothing to the fast moving conversation of he-said, she-said regarding some drama the weekend before, so consumed was I with not only the taquitos, but when it was going to be my turn to talk and tell my funny story. This is a problem that I have.

Finally, much like earlier in the day, I could hold it in no longer.

I took out my phone and texted Rachel. "I pooped in my pants today at the library."

"Who are you texting, that weirdo from match . com?" Rachel asked as her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She read the text, her eyes widened, and she leaned back in her chair and howled with delight. Then Rachel, her husband, and their friend all told stories about pooping in their own pants (and I'm sure some readers are going, yup, that happened to me). EXCUSE ME, EDITORS NOTE: I DON'T MEAN RACHEL. SHE HAS NEVER POOPED IN HER PANTS. I AM MISTAKEN. Our concensus: you can't hold in liquid poison like that, you can't even try. You have to tell yourself, 'my body was sick, it was poison, it had to come out.' There's no use beating yourself up over it. It's best to start laughing as soon as possible. Humorous self-deprecation is always the best policy. Because here's the thing, SHIT HAPPENS. And it's nice, often hysterical, to hear about it happening to other people.

For days afterward I could not toot in public because I was scared it would happen again, but enough time has passed that now I can.